


interdimensional nonsense

by mikkal



Series: sleeping at last (oct '19) [7]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Hurt Noctis Lucis Caelum, Pitioss Ruins (Final Fantasy XV), Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-15 22:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21025940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkal/pseuds/mikkal
Summary: Noctis is alone in Pitioss Ruins.Whumptober 2019 Day 7: Isolation





	interdimensional nonsense

**Author's Note:**

> _please_ don't expect anything too deep. I feel like I wouldn't be able to do Pitioss lore and/or Theory any justice. 
> 
> I just finished Pitioss for a second time and while the room I wrote this story in isn't the room that's the bane of my existence in terms of restarting, it's still a cool looking room.

Pitioss Ruins is a mistake. Coming here was a _cosmic mistake_. Why this place ever needed to exist in the first place is ridiculous. Forget gathering interdimensional kinks into one spot and turning it into a training ground. They should’ve built this place with no door and let it wallow into an all-consuming void until _boom_! it explodes out and Eos gets folded over into non-existence.

Okay, maybe Noctis feeling a little bitter.

A lot bitter.

His number one reoccurring thought so far has been just a long drawn out _fuuuuuccccckkkk_! Especially when his foot slips and he fallsfalls_falls_ into bottomless darkness, only to feel a sharp jolt in his core, and land back where he started with the loud ring of a brass bell or a gong sounding out to mock his failure.

Noctis stares despairingly at the not-slow-enough back and forth of the metal skull monstrosity. It’s wide, wicked smile stops a hair-breath away from him, the glowing molten _spinning_ spikes on either side gouging into the stonework before it moves away to the back of the room. What sort of interdimensional nonsense justifies _this_?

There’s two ways to mess this up. Slip and fall. Slip and end up impaled on the spikes. He knows from experience neither of those things are fun. He’s _barely_ lucky the only result of all of this is his clothes getting grimy. The spikes only lead to the briefest flashes of pain before he ends up back at the beginning of whatever puzzle he’s doing, and only distance is the progress he needs to make up. The falls just make his stomach twist and turn, and he’s thrown up at least twice now.

He rubs his eyes against the tears of frustration. Gods, what he wouldn’t give for Ignis’ smarts and Gladio’s determination and Prompto’s sunshine right now. Either one of them would be better at this than him. It wouldn’t have taken them—he pulls out his phone and swears when he sees the screen. Oh, right. His phone doesn’t work in here. He’s pretty sure it’s been _days_ and despite the fact he’s been using his phone’s flashlight in addition to the one clipped to his shirt, the battery is still at the seventy-six percent it was at when he entered this hellhole.

Phone goes back into the armory and he goes back to staring at the metal skull. Back and forth. Back and forth. When it goes back, he steps forward, glances both ways, and goes left where he sees the glowing red barrier of a monolith blocking a short cut. He drops to a different platform because that’s the only thing he can do, and rushes along the wall. Already the skull is coming back.

There’s a pillar to his right he _might_ be able to make—and if not, well…the beginning isn’t that far. Noctis launches himself to it, stumbling on the landing, and two more hops on to stone platforms just before the skull mechanism catches up, he can feel the heat of the spikes, gets him onto a platform with stone steps leading to nowhere.

Panting, he presses his face against the cool stonework, heart pounding in his chest. “You got this,” he mutters, the embarrassment of talking to himself faded long ago. “One thing at a time.”

The mechanism passes over him again and he looks up, eyeing it with trepidation. And that’s when he spots the metal bars on the back of the it, just wide enough for him to stand on and passing along the stonework where he won’t even have to jump for them.

It takes him to the back of the room, where a bronze arm sticks out of the wall, hand contorted into a clawing motion. There’s no body attached to it, and it’s melded into a metal plate that acts as another brick in the wall. Noctis frowns at it, confused. More confused about this than any of the other statues he’s seen in the Ruins. At least those he can try to attach to the visages of various Astrals and Messengers from stories.

But just a hand? That’s creepy.

Noctis shakes his head. Not the time to dwell on the logic of this place. (because there _is no logic_). He goes back to solving this room, running across platforms and climbing into giant moving skull machines. He has to climb to the top and jump on the skull’s head at some point, because that’s the only way he sees him reaching the sloped walkway that’s above where he started this whole mess.

There’s a monolith to destroy there, thankfully. But he hates the idea that there’s something _harder_ coming up that requires the shortcut to be there.

He jumps down to a platform, misjudges it, and tries to roll to save his ankle from being shattered.

Unfortunately, he rolls right off the edge.

And he fallsfalls_falls_ into the gaping maw of darkness, phantom laughter sounding in his ears, until something tugs sharply behind his bellybutton and he lands at the beginning of the room, staring at the skull just a hairs-breath away from him, the bronze bell’s ringing faded into the distance.

Noctis stumbles back as it moves away, breaths coming out too fast and painful, blood roaring in his ears, heart fluttering in his chest like a hummingbird trying to escape. He claps a hand over his mouth against the burning of bile climbing up his throat, but he can’t hold it back. He scrambles to the edge of the platform and vomits into the darkness—something in the back of his mind feeling vindictive about puking into the void that’s been chipping away at him every time he drops.

Eyes closed, skin clammy, he feels the heat the spikes before it registers that the skull has to come back at some point.

That point is now.

He doesn’t bother opening his eyes when they stab through him.

Half a second of pain and he’s three feet from where he died—died? Is that the right word for it? Noctis covers his ears at the sound of the bell, gritting his teeth. He’s made it this far, he thinks as he drops his hands and squares his shoulders, who knows how much more he has to get through. He can’t lose it now.

Noctis turns heel and goes through the shortcut. When he jumps to the platform again, he aims for the corner where the walls meet just in case he ends up having to roll again. From there it’s more jumping and climbing, once onto the top platform of the skull and he almost stays there until he realizes there’s metal bars coming up that are going to knock him into the void if he doesn’t move. He scrambles onto some passing stairs and then broken metal beams he has to walk across. It’s not the first time he’s had to do this, but each time sends his heart to his throat.

His balance has always been shit, ever since he was eight. While he can do all the flips and fancy moves that he likes, a balance beam expert is one thing he could never be.

There’s a cluster of bright blue butterflies—dragonflies? Butterflies—that scatter when he walks through them. Their wings are soft and cool against his skin and he can’t help but smile at them. Noctis pauses, lifts a hand, and tries his best to stand very still while on this surprisingly sturdy but no less narrow beam. He’s rewarded by one of the butterflies landing on the back of his hand, casting a soft blue glow over his skin.

He’s never seen these sorts of butterflies anywhere on Lucis while he’s seen dozens of them in the Ruins, usually in clusters of eight or ten. Vaguely, he wonders if that’s because they’re extinct and somehow have thrived in the Ruins, cut off from everything else (in that case…what do they eat?). Or, if they’re a result of the interdimensional ridiculousness and they’re not actually a real insect or animal.

The butterfly flaps its wings once, twice, then it takes off to join the others further down the beam. Noctis watches them dance around each other for a long second before he shakes himself and goes back to making his way across the beams. At the end of the last one he realizes he’s past the metal bars and the skull is coming back his way. Ahead of him is the switch he needs to trigger whatever he needs to trigger.

Noctis takes a deep breath and jumps onto the tallest platform as it moves into view, nearly trips on his landing, and has to hurry to make it to the pathway that leads to the switch before the skull mechanism moves away.

His knees ache, his chest burns, his hands are a bloody mess from catching himself on jagged metal and rock, but he's made it. He’s at the end of another room.

He jumps up to hit the switch and it goes dark, something rumbles in the distance. Noctis takes a moment to calm down before he’s moving forward. This way and that, he comes upon the next room. A monolith to his right, a black void in front of him, stone to his left. He scoots to the edge and sees stone sticking out, he drops down to it.

Drops down to another.

Drops down again and immediately clings to the ground, nails splitting as he digs them into the seam as a surge of terror washes over him. The platform is tilted at forty-five degrees, the edge sloping off into the void. Noctis looks over to the only other visible stone structure and carefully, so carefully crawls towards it.

To his horror, this is also at forty-five degrees. The entire room, wide and expansive to the point where he can’t see walls or the ceiling or the ground and can only make out a few twisting stone structures floating in the shadows, is all at an angle.

Already Noctis can see a lot of falling in his future. His stomach rolls preemptively.

“_Shit_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately, all I can really say is 'meh.' I'm behind on whumptober, was struggling with this one and this is all I could come up with. Sorry.
> 
> Tumblr @mikkalia  
twitter @mik_kal15  
Thank you for reading!


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